1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to acceleration of resource intensive numerical calculations, and more specifically, to accelerating simulation of a device within a large circuit by utilizing previously computed values corresponding to another device within the circuit when it is determined that both devices share the same state.
2. Related Art
Electronic circuit simulation uses mathematical models to replicate the behavior of an actual electronic device or circuit. Simulating circuit behavior before actually building the circuit can improve design efficiency by making faulty designs known and providing insight into the behavior of the circuit. Typical circuit simulators can include both analog and event-driven digital simulation capabilities. An entire mixed signal analysis can be driven from one integrated schematic.
Circuit simulation of complex circuit systems (e.g., systems on a chip) can involve thousands of transistors and other devices. A significant portion of the cost of circuit simulation is that of computing the characteristics of the transistors as coded in transistor models. For example, in simulation of phase locked loops (PLL), analog-digital converters (ADC), digital-analog converters (DAC), and DC-DC converters, computing transistor characteristics can consume 60% to 90% of the cost of simulating a complex circuit. Simulation of analog/mixed-signal full-chip systems at a transistor level can take weeks and require very high accuracy.
It is therefore desirable to speed up transistor level simulation of integrated circuit systems without suffering a loss in accuracy. Further, it is desirable to achieve such acceleration in simulation without consuming a significant amount of additional system memory in the simulator.
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates identical items unless otherwise noted. Figures are not necessarily drawn to scale.